Primary Sources

Browse Items

If they wanted to keep out spies, security personnel on both sides of the Berlin Wall had to become sophisticated readers of facial features. This manual, prepared by the East German border police as a training text for their front line guards, shows the reader how to recognize someone from telling facial features. Notice how the reader is directed to pay attention not to the entire face, but….

Throughout the Cold War both sides regularly sent agents across the border, both to gather information that might be useful and to test the ability of the guardians of the border to catch agents of the other side. The images shown here are from copies made by border guards in East Berlin during the final years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although the names and biographical data in these….